A way to find a flat area of the terrain before landing a delicate lander?

After a couple rolling crashes and a nights sleep, I think I have a solution: A blimp probe. It will cruise around just above ground level, and then land on a flat spot in a kethane field. Then I will use it's coordinates as a target for landing the mining operation.

That will obviously only work on planets with an atmosphere. For planets without an atmosphere, a possible solution would be to swing down in an elliptical orbit to an extremely low altitude, with a pitch of 0°. I could take screenshots with the camera facing almost perfectly downwards, with the surface coordinates showing. Then I could analyze the photos and pick a location with a landmark to guide a very small marker probe down. If all goes well, I land the mining operation at the probe's coordinates. If it doesn't, I return the probe to the orbiter, refuel it, and try again.